


This Roaring Silence

by IraBragi



Series: Building Home [11]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 17:00:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13127841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IraBragi/pseuds/IraBragi
Summary: I have been both fascinated and frustrated with the Joker as a character for a long time, and since Batman is the protagonist, most of the stories center around his experience of their struggle.  The thing is, when Batman and Joker face off, there are a whole lot of other people who are affected.  I kept coming back to the idea of “what does this look like from someone else’s point of view?”  As usual when I’m brooding on something writing happened.Also, it probably goes without saying but this is a Joker fic; it’s dark.  People die (although not any protagonists.)  It’s not a fluffy story but I do think that it’s a hopeful one.  I really enjoyed writing it and I hope you enjoy reading it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I have been both fascinated and frustrated with the Joker as a character for a long time, and since Batman is the protagonist, most of the stories center around his experience of their struggle. The thing is, when Batman and Joker face off, there are a whole lot of other people who are affected. I kept coming back to the idea of “what does this look like from someone else’s point of view?” As usual when I’m brooding on something writing happened.
> 
> Also, it probably goes without saying but this is a Joker fic; it’s dark. People die (although not any protagonists.) It’s not a fluffy story but I do think that it’s a hopeful one. I really enjoyed writing it and I hope you enjoy reading it.

It’s quiet when Jason gets the call.  We are in the bedroom of our apartment; Jay is getting his stuff together to go on patrol, and I’m already dressed for bed.  We are throwing ideas back and forth about what we want to do for our anniversary in a few weeks.  I say something silly about how I can’t believe that I’ve managed to put up with him for six long years, and he points out that I was the one who was dumb enough to marry his sorry ass.  I’m about to grab his mask and demand a kiss before he gets it back when his phone rings.  He’s standing by the dresser and I can’t hear what is said on the other end.

“We’ll be there in fifteen.”  

He ends the call and our eyes meet across the room.

Jason told me about his history with the Joker early in our relationship.  It was on one of those late nights; the ones before either of us had quite admitted to ourselves what it meant that Jason kept “ending up” in my neighborhood after patrol, or what it meant that I always seemed to still be awake when he did.  

We were sitting on my couch, talking about everything and nothing, and I looked up and he was staring at me with that same look on his face.  He wanted to scare me off, even in the moment I knew that.  Good things are dangerous when you know that they can be torn away, so he did the worst thing that he could think of and told me everything - the warehouse, the crowbar, the bomb and waking back up afterwards.  

Maybe it should have worked, but I've never regretted that it didn't - not even now.

“The Joker’s out.  I want you to stay at the manor.”

I nod, the manor is as safe as anywhere.

“And you?”

“I’ll find out what Batman knows.”  The second part, what he leaves unsaid, is that he isn't going to wait around for Bruce after that.  Also, that this time he won’t have rubber bullets in his gun.  Some beasts are just too dangerous to let live once they get off their chain.  He told me that too, all those years ago.

Maybe I shouldn't have agreed with him, but I did.  I still do.

 

\------------------

 

Alfred’s face is tight with worry and Bruce is pacing the cave, already in his uniform.

“He blew up half a wing of the asylum then disappeared.”  It’s Dick who speaks, his knuckles clenched into fists at his sides.  Damian is standing close to his older brother, if I didn’t know better I would say that he looked scared.  Then it occurs to me - he probably is scared.  Joker is the one villain he’s never faced.  Him and Tim both; it’s the bogeyman who killed their older brother, who terrorized their father, who seems more devil than man - and now they are about to face him.        

“How do we know that he wasn’t caught in the blast?”  I know it’s a nieve hope but I say it anyway.  It feels strange to be in the cave with everyone suited up.  I’ve never been part of the pre-patrol planning and Alfred usually refuses to come to the cave at all, citing his hip and the stairs (although it has more to do with his, mostly vain, hope of getting the boys to eat meals upstairs in the dining room.)  The answer comes a moment later as Tim shoves a handful of papers at Jason.  

They were printouts of security cam footage.  The first one shows a man in deep shadow standing with his back to the camera.  Tim’s algorithm had locked on to the figure and pieced together the footage each time he entered a new camera's view.  The man hadn’t made it hard to do.  In the second shot he is looking over his shoulder pointing at the camera.  The third catches him full face on - he is leering at us, face painted in white and bloody red smears across his mouth.  The pages sound loud in the room as Jason flips through them.  Like an old, jerky, animation a woman comes into frame and he lurches forward to grab her sleeve.  

You never see the knife.  Even looking at the stills it’s too fast to catch.  One moment his hand is on her sleeve and the next she is crumpling to the ground.  He walks forward then, leaving her dead under the camera, as he walks down the road to the next one.  When he reaches it, it’s a ATM security camera so it’s lower than the rest were, he stops and smiles again.  

“You can’t tell from the stills but he says something.”  Tim pulls up the footage.  I’m not great at lip reading and the picture is grainy but after watching the ten second clip a couple of times I figure it out.  It’s only two words, but he repeats them over and over; “I’m back.  I’m back.  I’M BAAAAAAAAAAACK.”

 

\----------------

 

No one sleeps that night.  Bruce and the boys are all tracking down leads; talking to people, trying to find out how this happened, what Joker’s plan is.  Alfred takes over comms and the computers and I help as much as I can.  I suspect that it’s only a matter of time until my real skill set is needed.

Harley won’t pick up her phone.  I call her five times and then I call Ivy and that number goes to voicemail too.

“She can take care of herself Master Aaron.”  How can he sound so calm in the middle this madness?

“Adding more tizzy to this situation will hardly help anything, now will it?”  Add mind reader to the list of the old wizard’s talents.  I walk to a computer and start helping sort through possible sightings on the city’s traffic cams.  The work is repetitive and boring and I’m grateful to lose myself in it.

 

\-----------------

 

No one sleeps the next day or the night after either.  The Gotham Gazette early edition covers the explosion and the murder.  Bruce kicks a filing cabinet so hard it caves in and crashes into the wall, denting the wall as well.

“Fucking police and their bloody fucking leaks!”  I’ve never heard him swear like that before.  Not even when I’m stiching him up.

It turns out that it wasn’t the police.  Someone mailed the pictures directly to the Gazette.  The envelope was plain with only two words scrawled on the front - “I’m back.”

 

\-----------------

 

It’s the third day when the argument I had been bracing for since the beginning happens.  Jason wants to set a trap with a sniper and Bruce growlers that they are better than the monsters, not one of them.  Jason leaves.  When Dick asks me where he will go next I shrug, he lets it go.

That night there is an explosion on the subway.  This time there are three words spray painted over the entrance to the underground, “come find me.”  Six people are dead.

 

 The investigation, both by the police and vigilantes, into the explosion and subsequent escape from Arkham turn up depressingly little.  A guard with a weakness for gambling and debts to be exploited, another with a family that could be threatened, an orderly with a tendency to chat that could be manipulated.  Not a one of them were truly bad, not a one of them had any clue as to the extent of the threat.  A marid of small pieces that had been painstakingly nudged into place.

\--------------------

 

On the fifth night Bruce tries to make Damian and Tim stay home.  He says that it’s just so they can get some sleep but no one believes him.  It takes Alfred raising his voice to get everyone to agree to sit down for a meal.  Suddenly everyone is too tired to argue.  Jason hasn't answered his phone since yesterday.  If the Joker had got to him, he would brag about it, we would hear.  At least that’s what I tell myself over and over.

 

Not even the news channels will play the footage that he sends in next.  It’s all over the internet anyway.

It was a clinic.  He lines up everyone in the waiting room and tells the world that he will shoot one for each day Batman hasn’t killed him.  It’s only been seven days, he shoots them all anyway.  I don't think I can tell if I’m awake or asleep anymore.

 

\---------------

 

Jason answers his phone on the first ring.

“I was too late.  Again.”  I don’t know what to to say to make it better so I tell him the only thing that is important.

“You don’t fucking get yourself killed.  You got it?  Don’t you fucking dare.”  His laugh breaks my heart, but it’s something.

“You’re still at the manor right?”  He wants me safe.  Hell, I want me safe.  I tell him that I’m helping Alfred with the logistics.

“I love you Aaron.”  I tell him that I love him too.  We hang up.  I try to tell myself that it wasn’t goodby.  

When Damian comes upstairs to get something he left in his room I step in front of him and wrap my arms around his shoulders.  He’s taller than me now - but no less stubborn than the thirteen year old he was when I first met him.  He just stands there until I let go.  In all the time I have known him it’s the first time I have ever seen him accept physical comfort without complaint.  We are all going to die.

  
  


\-----------------

 

Nightwing and Robin find the arms dealers, who sold the C4 to a henchman, who passed it to another lacky, who then made a dead drop, which leads to warehouse.  They hear manic laughter, then he is gone and the building is burning.  They find the henchman, already dead, and a wall full of spray painted rambling.  Bruce is too tired to be furious that they went in alone.

They expand the search net.  

Bruce gets close enough to throw a batarang across a parking lot.

“He’s hurt.  It will be easier to track him now.”

The body on the steps of City Hall is flayed open.  He was a policeman that Batman had saved from the Joker years ago.  He was two months from retirement.  “The price of failure” was written in blood next to him.  Alfred locked himself in the kitchen.  I can hear the sobbs over the crash of plates breaking.

 

\----------------

 

I don’t know what I was thinking.  I was tired, tired in the way that makes everything feel dreamy and unreal.  Or I maybe I figured that we were all going to diethe  anyway.  I don't know.  I needed a phone charger.  A stupid phone charger.  I borrowed the keys to one of the cars in the garage and drove to the apartment.  It was wrecked.

Someone was standing in the middle of the living room and the book shelves had been tipped over.  There were books all over the floor.  I was furious that they were getting crumpled like that.  I didn't feel the dart hit the side of my neck.  My knees gave out and everything went dark.

 

\--------------------

 

I’m pretty good at fighting.  Over the years I’ve learned the formal martial arts that Damian loves and I’ve picked up street brawling tactics from Jason and Harley.  Bruce, of all people, took the time to teach me how to handle a tactical baton, and I’m not above using a baseball bat or knife when the situation calls for it.  I usually have my baton, a few knifes, and some lockpicks on me.  My life is rarely normal, and you never know what you will suddenly need.  I don’t usually carry a gun.

It’s not that I’m afraid of them.  Or that I’m unable to use them.  Jason taught me to shoot and we go to the range every so often so I can keep in practice.  I’m decent at it.  I understand why he uses them.  I respect it.  It’s just that guns are final.  They end things.  I stitch people back up and try to give them another chance.

 

After the call, while we threw a few things in a bag and got ready to go to the manor, I walked over the closet where Jason keeps his guns.  The revolver fit my hand well.  I had placed five out of six bullets in the bullseye earlier that week.

Was I afraid?  Did I have some inkling, even then, of what was about to happen?  Did picking it up mean that I wanted to use it?  Was that one choice the single, glossimer thin, dividing line between what happened, and what would have happened otherwise?

Or maybe life just happens.  Maybe you watch your family tear themselves to pieces trying to catch a monster who tells them that the blood that  _ he  _ sheds in on  _ their  _ hands.  Maybe you feel sick with exhaustion and your step on your phone charger and you remember that there is one at home.  You put on the coat that has the gun tucked a the secret pocket behind the lining.  The gun that you know has real bullets because you loaded it yourself, and you know that everyone will worry if you let them know where you are going but you think that you will be back before they notice.

Maybe it doesn't matter.     

I recognize the face hovering over mine when I wake up.  Lark was a professional neerdowell and henchman, he’d worked for half the villains in Gotham at one point or another.  None too bright but, like most guys in that line of work, not the worst fellow when you got right down to it.  Last time I saw him I had reset his shoulder and splinted his wrist before Bruce took him back to jail.  He looked worse today then he had then.

“Check him for anything interesting.”  The voice came from behind us was… I don't know, is it wrong to say that it was nondescript?  It seems almost irreverent to describe the voice that was the last thing so many people have heard, the voice that taunted Batman across Gotham and back, the voice that echoes through my husband’s nightmares, as “blandly self important.”

“Put some cuffs on and then we will find out what he can tell about why he was at Red Hood's apartment.”

Lark’s eyes had the wild look of a trapped animal.

“I’m sorry Chapel” His voice is so low that I’m lip reading more than hearing him.  “I didn’t think anyone would be there.”

I understand.  I’ve patched up enough of the bad guys that I have a reputation.  If you are hurt, my living room is a no-combat zone.  I’ve yelled at vigilantes and I’ve stood down villains.  You can duke it out outside, but if you want my patient you come through me.  And since Harley kept calling me Chapel the name stuck.

“He, he’s, just a random civilian, I bet he doesn't know nothing!”  His voice is high, panicked.  Whatever Joker offered or threatened to get his cooperation the poor fool never had a chance.   

I can  _ hear  _ the eye roll from across the room.  “Hurry  _ up _ .”  

“Sorry, sorry.”  Lark snaps the cuffs around my wrists.  

There isn’t any noise, no scream or last words, he just crumples as the knife leaves Joker's hand and settles between his ribs.  He falls to the side and then I’m looking up at the face that I've only seen in blurry surveillance footage and nightmares.

“Sorry about that.  Sooo hard to find good help these days!”  

He’s... small.  I’m sitting on a concrete floor with my hands cuffed and the Joker is looming over me, wearing his bloody face paint and a ripped suite, and he’s just… small.  

His face is sunken and the white makeup highlights the scars and grooves.  His hands are never still, running through his rats nest hair, smoothing his suite, pointing at me.

“So, why were you at Red’s pad?  And no lies now, you wouldn't want me to get  _ annoyed _ .”  He laughs and lashes out with his boot.  The blow grazes my cheek.  Damian kicks harder in practice.  He looks old.  An angry old man who loves the drama of playing the devil.  

“I live there.”  

This time the kick did connect with my head.  I roll over and use the distraction to feel in my pocket.  Lark had taken the weapons that were in my pockets and clipped to my belt but left a paperclip - and the gun.  Was he really that bad at his job or giving me a gift?  It could be either; I suppose I’ll never know.  

Lockpicking is something you tend to pick up when living with a former child criminal.  The gun is still in the pocket in my coat, I can feel it digging into my ribs.

“Tell me the truth!  WHO ARE YOU?  Did Batman send you?”  He tries to pull me upright again and but only manages to push me against the wall.  His arms are shaking as well as his hands now, his eye keep darting from side to side.  I stay limp and keep my fingers curled around the paperclip.

“I’ll set this city on fire!  Watch it burn!  All of you burn, burn, burn.”  He spins away from me, walks across the room.  He wants an audience, all I need are a few seconds.  The cuffs click open and I scramble for the gun.

When it happens, it’s in slow motion (funny how adrenaline will do that.)  He turns around, I wrap my fingers around the gun and start to pull it out.  I think he opens his mouth to say something, I can’t hear it over the blood pounding in my ears.  

He’s over me now.  

Too close to bother with aiming.  

I swing it up and pull the trigger.  

One.  Two.  He jerks and falls.

I stand up, panic clawing at my throat, suddenly convinced that he is going to get back up.  Three.  Four.  Five.  His face is gone.  Good, I think, I want him gone.  Six.  I put the last shot in his chest with the first two.  Suddenly it’s quiet and the gun slips from my nerveless fingers.

 

Now what?

 

Now what?

 

I could call Jason, Bruce, Alfred - any of them.  They will make it all go away.  I don’t think even Bruce would hate me.  Jason will hate himself for not protecting me.  But… they will make it all go away.  Destroy the body, clean up the evidence, sweep it under the rug.  I look at the body, it’s not the blood that bothers me - I’ve seen more blood before - it’s the brain and bone splattered like a dammed halo around him.  He was a monster, he hurt so many people.   He’s not just Batman’s nightmare anymore.  People deserve to see that the devil can be shot.  I make my decision.  I pull out my phone.

“Hello, dispatch?  My name is Aaron Ellis, I just shot the Joker.”


	2. Chapter 2

Time is a funny thing.  It warps and bends and twists in on itself sometimes.  I sit, my back against the wall and refuse to look at either one of the bodies while I wait for the the police to come.  Then when they come I can’t pry my eyes away from the black bags they put Lark and  _ him _ in.  I can’t quite make my mind grasp that he’s really dead.  That it’s really over.

An officer starts taking my statement, then a detective pushes him aside and starts asking me the same questions all over again.  I think we talk for a few hours, it was probably only a few minutes.  They have an EMT check me over.  She tells me what I already knew, it looks like I was dosed with “something” (technical term there) and since I am awake and talking I should be fine.  Ahh, Gotham medicine, you gotta love it.  If I experience any adverse reactions… bla, bla, bla.  Then put me in the back of a police car, but they don’t cuff me.

When we get to the station they swab the blood on my hands then take me to a bathroom and watch while I try to wash the blood off.  They ask me if I want to call a lawyer.  I dial Jason.  Before I can even open my mouth he is screaming over the line. 

“Where are you?  Alfred said you left!  There was a shooting.  They’re saying… Where are you?”

“I’m at the police station.  I think I need a lawyer.  Can you call someone please?”  There is silence over over the line.  Only the harsh breathing lets me know that he is still there.

“Christ.  You really did.  Fuck.”  The officer makes an impatient noise and motions for me to finish up.

“I’m hanging up now.  Are you going to call someone?”  It seems to snap him out of it somewhat.

“Christ.  Yeah, don’t talk to them until…”  I hang up.

Time warps again.  I sit across from a grim faced cop until the lawyer shows up.  She’s firm and to the point.  “Clearly a case of self-defence” and “charge him or my client will leave now” are repeated several times each.  Eventually we get up and she puts her hand on my shoulder and stears me through the precinct and onto the street.

Jason is standing outside smoking.  Judging by the number of butts on the ground he’s been there a while.  When he sees us he drops the cigarette and opens his mouth.  She cuts him off before he can get a word out.  

“Not the time or the place.  Get in the car, both of you.”

We do.  I wonder, suddenly, if he hates me.  Or maybe I’m really contemplating if I will hate myself once my brain is clear enough to work through the last few hours.  We drive back to manor in silence.  She - I still don’t know her name, or maybe I was told and I just forgot - parks and starts walking to the house.  It seems like too much effort to get up so I just stay where I am.  The whole ride I haven’t looked at Jason once.

The touch on my shoulder is feather light.  Like he’s afraid that I’ll break.  Or maybe he’s afraid to believe that I’m actually here - here and alive.

“I’m sorry.”  I don’t really know why I say it, it seems like the thing to say.

“Christ, what are you sorry for?  I’m the one who…”

“Jason Todd, not everything is your goddamn fault!”  My voice comes out too loud in the smallness of the car, and then for a heartbeat it is very, very quiet. 

“Fuck, we’re quite the pair”  His eyes are so very blue sometimes.  I take a moment to just look.  To remind myself that he’s alive, that I’m alive, our family is inside; we survived.  We will keep on surviving. 

I love his eyes but what I like even more is how his mouth is beginning to curl up into a grin.  Then we are both laughing.

“We are aren’t we.”

“Why the hell did you leave the manor?  Alfred didn’t even know you were gone.  Then there was a call over the police scanner and, well, you know the rest.”

“I didn’t think it would be a problem.”  Maybe it sounds like I’m giving him a pat answer but it’s the truth.  If anyone would understand it’s him.

“I can't let you out of my sight at all can I?”  He’s teasing, I roll my eyes anyway.

“Oh sure, Mr. “always getting his ass into trouble” Todd.  You, of all people, have room to talk.”

“Getting my ass into trouble, hmm?  I though your name was Aaron not Trouble.”

It’s much nicer to not be able to breath because you are laughing too hard than because it feels like the world is ending.

When I can get the words out I use my best “not amused” tone and deadpan back.  “That is grammatically suspect and biologically dubious.”

His arms are the first solid thing I’ve felt in a week.  For a long time we just sit here holding each other.

Eventually I pull away, “I guess we should go in at some point.  Deal with hurricane Bruce.”

Jason must have heard the worry in my tone because he leans forward to kiss me; it’s my ear that happens to be closest.

“Naw, not a hurricane, maybe just a small tropical depression.”  Then he kisses me properly.  “Either way I’ll protect you.”

Sometimes it takes months and months of reflection and therapy to realize something really simple.  Other times revelation hits you in a flash of lightning.  Right then it was the lighting, because in that moment I just knew: when Jason Todd tells me that he is going to protect me, I believe him.  

It doesn’t mean that nothing bad will ever happen.   Not even a god can promise that.  But no matter what happens next - whatever the police decide to do with me, whatever Bruce has to say about his son-in-law shooting his arch nemesis dead, whatever I end up feeling about what happened today - I know that he is going to be by my side, and that’s enough for me.  

I twist my finger through his.  “Come on.  Let's get this over with.”  

 

\--------------

 

The lawyer's name is Marisha Stevens.  She is a friend of Bruce and apparently helped Jason with some of his youthful transgressions.  

“Don’t worry, we will get this sorted out.  I kept this one out of jail often enough and he actually did most of what he was accused of!”  (She fixes Jay with a look that would have any sane person looking at the floor and rethinking their life choices.  Because it’s Jason, he just winks back.)

We sit at the kitchen table and spend the next couple of hours going over (and over, and over) what happened minute-by-minute.  Some things I remember like I am looking at a painting in the museum (one of the ones that Catwoman hasn't decided to “rehome” for herself.)  Other things are stubbornly blurry. 

Did I try to revive Lark after Joker knifed him?  I must have.  That’s what I do, right?  I can’t remember.  Was it Joker or Lark who drugged me?  Where was Joker when I shot?  Was he moving towards me or away?  Marisha keeps reminding me to breath and just tell her the truth.

“We can make the boys leave if you like.”  Her tone is so kind.  Bruce is sitting across the table drinking something that is probably more bourbon than coffey.  Jason is next to me, I’ve twisted my chair so I can lean back against his shoulder.  I don’t know if anyone else has noticed, but Damian is in the crawlspace between the pantry and the kitchen (you can’t see him but every so often I could hear the rustling.)  Tim probably just bugged the room.  I shake my head.

“They are fine.”

We keep talking.  Eventually she slips her notepad into the leather briefcase beside her chair and we shake hands.

“How much do I owe you?”  We aren’t rich but between what Jason makes as Red Hood and what I make working for Wayne Industries we have enough. 

I fought against working for Bruce for years.  It felt wrong, like taking the easy way out.  Then Detective Robert Haynes put me in the hospital for over a week and the surgery to fix my foot kept me off my feet for even longer.  It turns out that it’s not that hard to replace a lab tech and my old job gave me a get well card and their regrets.  I can’t really blame them, being Chapel made keeping a 9 to 5 schedule difficult.  

It was Tim who talked me into taking the job.  Nothing fancy, I would be doing most of the same stuff I was before, plus taking care of some of the animals that were used in the laboratories.  (I think Tim was hoping that I, out of anyone, had some chance of convincing Damian not to adopt each and every one.)  It was a fine job, it offered health insurance, and the boss never made a fuss if I was late in the mornings.

“I have ‘t.”  Bruce’s voice should not be able to sound that  hard while also slurring at the edges.

“I called her Bruce.  I have it.”  Jason doesn't sound much better and he hasn't even had anything to drink.

“I SAID I WILL PAY!  It’s not like I can do anything else…”  No coffee cup can withstand Batman slamming it through the table.  Bruce was out of the room before the pieces of the mug had fully hit the floor.

“Let him go Master Jason.  He need to know he did this much, at least.”  It’s Alfred who knows what to say.  It always is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone who has seen the TV show Leverage (which if you haven’t you should, it’s awesome) I based my lawyer character on Tara Cole - Smart, strong, knows how to get what she wants with a smile, and very, very deadly.


	3. Chapter 3

You know the feeling when you wake up from a nap in the middle of the afternoon?  The world is far away and foggy and you just lay there, slowly coming back to your body, until eventually you convince yourself to sit up and go about the rest of your day?  But everything still just feels slightly _off,_ just a little bit to the left of normal?  That is how the next few weeks feel.

 

The police decide that I did not kill Lark.  I did have his DNA under my nails but my prints where nowhere on the knife so the assumption was that it got there when I checked for a pulse.  As far as the shooting, the question was never _if_ I shot Joker but if it was justified.  It takes some back and forth with the attorneys but charges are never filed and then I am formally cleared.  I don’t think that anyone in Gotham really wanted to be the lawyer to prosecute the Joker’s killer.  We never do get the gun back though.

 

\--------------

 

The apartment is a wreck.  Jason wants to move immediately, (“The whole damn point of a safe house is that no one knows where it bloody IS!”) and I don’t.  Moving feels like too much like surrendering.  We argue while shoving broken junk and crumpled books around.

“Well how are people going to find me if I’m hidden in a fucking bunker somewhere?”

“How are you going to fix people if you’re DEAD!”

“I think we just proved that I’m pretty good at staying not dead!”

“Only when you fucking don’t stay where you should and get yourself…”

“FUCK.  YOU.”  I throw the book straight at his head.  I know he will step out of the way, not that it’s an excuse, in that moment I truly want to hurt him.  He steps to the side and the book hits the wall and knocks over the stack of DVD’s that I’d sorted five minutes ago.

“Fuck.”

We pick up the DVD’s and sort out the stuff that is too broken to be worth saving.  It’s too quiet.

“I…”

“Maybe we…”

We both stop awkwardly and look at eachother.

“I’m sorry for losing my temper.  I shouldn’t have done that.”

He laughs a little, “I manage to dodge bullets every day, I think I can survive a deadly book attack.”

I shove him lightly, “That’s not the point.”

His hair stands on end when he runs his hands through it.  “I know.  I know.  Why is this such a mess?”

I don’t know if he means the house or everything else.  I shrug.  “It’s going to take time.”

“Always fucking hated time.”

We both laugh at that.

 

\------------------

 

Tuesday evening of the second week I convince Jason to actually go on patrol.  After he leaves I spend the whole night sitting beside the bed with a flashlight and Harley's bat clutched in my lap.  It’s six am the next morning when I get to the manor.  Alfred is working in the kitchen.  He passes me some carrots and a knife.  

The silence feels like an old jacket, worn in all the right places and hanging perfectly across your shoulders.

“Assaulting those carrots won't keep the nightmares away Master Aaron.”  I look down at my hand.  When had I switched to a combat grip on the handle?  I push the cutting board across the counter.

“But I’m not.”

A single raised eyebrow.  “Not what Master Aaron?”

“Nightmares.  I’m not having them.”  Carrots taste good even when they are cut crooked.  I bite the end off, the crunch is satisfying.  “He was going to kill me and I fought back.  He _just killed someone_ right in front of me for Christs sake!”  The carrot is staining my fingers orange, I grip it harder.  “Why is everyone having nightmares except me?”  

I haven't spoken to Bruce since blow up in the kitchen.  Damian hasn't come down to try to “rescue” any of the animals at work in a week.  Things with Jason are… strained.  With Jason I don’t think it’s even about me really.  His childhood boogeyman came out of the dark and almost killed someone he loves - again.  I can’t blame him.  I also don’t know how to help him.

“What’s wrong with me Alfred?”

He reaches across the counter and places a hand on my shoulder.  If I live to be twice his age, I hope that I can learn to have half of his poise; or any of his wisdom.

“There is nothing you have to be ashamed of.  You killed a monster and you walked away.  You did what I had always hoped that I would have cause to do.”  People say that Bruce’s eyes are intense.  They have never met Alfred Pennyworth.  I swallow hard.

“The mask has its place,” he continues, “but it can blind it’s wearer as much as it protects them.  You Master Aaron, see what gets lost in the mask.  You see beyond what a mask can be.”  He pauses, removes his hand and brushes an imaginary speck of dirt off his glove.  “Bruce has many heirs, but I am glad that there is someone who chose a different path.”  He turns away, his voice thick, “It requires a is a high price to see, Master Aaron.  Sometimes a very high one indeed.”

 

\------------------

 

Harley formally identifies the body, she was the closest thing to a relative he had I suppose.  Apparently she stomped into the city morgue and demanded that the terrified intern let her see the body.  When they asked her what she wanted to do with him she shrugged.  

“Let him rot” she spits and walked out.  They don’t, let him rot that is.  Instead they cremate him and put the remains in a standard issue steel urn with a index number on the side and set it away in a storage room with all the other unclaimed bodies.  I don’t find out most of this until much later.  

Since then there have a been quite a few break-ins at the morgue.  People want to see the urn.  Someone scrawls a rather creative obscenity on the wall, others leave pictures of the victims.  I wonder if it would have been better or worse to have buried him, to give them a skull to stare at.  There are already conspiracy blogs covering every possible theory from the Joker faking his own death, to “proof” that “Aaron Ellis” is just a pseudonym for Batman.  I quickly learn better than to google my name.  

Thankfully, (and almost certainly due to some cyber-magic of Tim’s) my picture and other easily identifiable information are only rarely connected to the name.  In the cases where they are (such as one particularly imaginative blog that claimed to have proof that Aaron Ellis was not only Batman but _also_ Joker, as well with an eye witness statement from an unnamed police officer to back it up) the sheer ridiculousness of the claims made them easy to brush off. It turns out that there are quite a lot of Aaron Ellis’s in the world.

I don’t know any of that when I see Harley next .  I knew she was alive because I had asked Jason to check, but I figured she would find me when she wanted to.  She swings in form the balcony and watches pack dishes for a while.

“You here to fight me or thank me?”  It was probably the wrong thing to say, I seemed to be doing that a lot lately.

“I love Ivy you know.”  I nodd.  “Why do I miss him too?”  Her voice breaks and something in me does too.  It’s not guilt, but it’s sympathy; or something close.  Sometimes the hurt just keeps spreading farther and farther no matter what you do.

“You can love someone and hate them, and love someone else and still miss what you loved about the person you hate.”  It shouldn’t make sense.  It didn’t even make sense to me, but she sits down and hands me the next plate.

“I’m glad you’re ok Chappy.” (Apparently “Chapel” is just too long a name to bother with.  I’ve had a whole list of nicknames at this point.  Chappy is one of the ones that more-or-less stuck.)

“Thanks Harley.  I hope you…”  I trail off.

“Oh fuck this!  Do you want ice cream?”  She phrased it as a question but she’s already tugging me toward the door.  I roll my eyes and grab my wallet.

“Only if it’s mint chocolate… wait up Harley!”

 

\----------------

 

No matter how stubborn I am about not wanting to move it becomes clear that it’s the right choice.  Jason is refusing to sleep, I’m jumping at shadows, and the arguments are getting more frequent.  For the first time it doesn't feel like we’ve made up after we yell, it just feels like we are holding our breath until the next thing sets us off.

When I show Jason the listing for an apartment half an hour away his shoulders slump with relief.

“It’s closer to work for me and we will be right near the library.”  He picks me up and spins me around.  It’s the first real smile I’ve seen in far too long.  I just hope this move is the right choice and not simply slapping a bandage over the infection.

 

\-------------

 

It’s Dick who draggs Damian over with the pretense of helping with the move.  Jason is god-only-knows-where and I’m trying to break down the bed when they burst in the front door. (Thank goodness I had already packed the handcuffs away.  Although I suppose, given the brothers mutual line of work, handcuffs aren’t the most incriminating item in the world.)

“We’re going to help you pack!”  How is it that Tim drinks all the caffeine but it’s Dick who sounds like it?  
“He’s here to help, I’ve been kidnapped against my will.  Also he’s going to try to hug you.”  Damian sounds put out.  Knowing him, this can mean anything from “he’s happy to see me and won’t show it” to “he hates my guts and wants to kill me.”  I sigh and side step the taller menace (who is indeed trying to tackle, I mean hug, me) and shove a tape dispenser at my friend.

“I need more medium size boxes.”

“You have too much junk.”

“Damian!” his older brother hisses at him.  If I wait for these idiots to sort it out we will all die of old age.

“Grayson, could you do me a favor and get some more tape?  We are about to run out.”  He looks between me and his brother then slowly nods.  I watch him close the door then take a deep breath and turn to Damian.

“Are you mad at me?”

“No.”

“Are you scared of me?”

“Like I would ever fear…”  I cut him off.

“Do you still want to be friends?”

“We aren’t friends, you’re merely a useful…”

“Stow it short stuff.  We’re friends and you know it.  You were a flower girl at my wedding.”

“I was no such thing!”  His tone is outraged but his body language has relaxed.

“So the question here is, a) what is the matter, and b) are we going to fix it or not?”  I sit down across from him and take the box he has taped together.  You would think that for all his considerable skills he could get the tape less crumpled.

“Have you “fixed it” with Jason yet?”  The little jerk was far too smart for anyone’s good sometimes.

“We’re working on it, and you are avoiding the subject.”

“Father isn’t sleeping.”  Ahh, so that’s what this is all about.

“Is that my fault?”  I wasn't being sarcastic, it was an honest question.  I can see him try to work out his answer.

“No” he finally responds.

“But it’s because of what I did?”  He nods.

“I won’t apologize for what I did.  I’m not a Robin and I’m not a vigilante.  The Joker was going to kill me and I made the choice not to die.”  Maybe it’s a low blow but I can’t help but add, “Besides, if it was me instead of him you were buring Bruce still wouldn't be sleeping.”  Damian thinks about that, I put shoes into the box.

“Father hates that I’ve killed people before.”  The silence drags on.  “I suppose that you are no better than me now.”  Most of the ugly things that Damian says are to cover his own fears, but that was even more blatant than usual.

“We are both fine then, because neither of us are bad.”  I know that he will never really believe me.  Some hurts are just too deep.  I’ll keep saying it anyway.

“I think you did the right thing”  His tone implies that he is bestowing a great gift on me.  I’ll take imperious and know-it-all over self loathing any day.  
“It can be the right thing and still suck.”  The box is full.  I push it over to Damian to tape closed.

“You missed training last week.”  There we go.  Now we are back to normal.

“That I did.  I’m sure you will make me pay for it this week.”

“Always.”

“I hate you.”

“Strangely, the evidence seems to indicate that you do not.”  I roll my eyes at him.

“You are making that box crooked.”  He throws the tape dispenser at me.  I catch it with one hand.  We are going to be fine.

 

\----------------

 

My relationship with Bruce Wayne has always been a bit odd.  As Batman and Chapel we get along well enough.  He’s often too hard headed to admit that he’s hurt and let me patch him up, but I’ve put him back together more often than he cares to admit.  He thanks me by buying all the medical books and supplies I want as well as quite a few I don’t.  I think he’s glad that I didn’t choose to take up crime fighting.  In his mind it’s one less person who he will feel responsible for when they get hurt.  Of course being Bruce, he feels responsible anyway.  

As Aaron Ellis and Bruce Wayne our relationship always revolved mostly about the role I had in his son’s lives - first as Damian’s friend, then as Jason’s partner.  He welcomed me into family life simply, with no self-congratulation or fanfare, and I’ve always been grateful for it.  

For all that though, it’s quite rare that we have an actual conversation that isn’t centered around either imminent blood loss or his need to, “stop pushing Jason away, I don’t care how right you think you are!  You are both too stubborn for this world, goddamnit!”  All of which made  what I needed to do next difficult.

I waited until after training with Damian that week (He would never admit it, even under threat of death, but now that Damian was over his initial anger, he was slightly in awe of the fact that I was the one that took down _The Joker_.  As his hero worship had nearly dislocated my shoulder, I was hoping that it would pass quickly.)  I found Bruce in his office and knocked on the open door.

“Come in.”  He hadn't looked up but knowing Bruce he’s probably memorized the foot step patterns of half the city.  He definitely could hear that Damian had kicked my ass.

“Do you have a few minutes Bruce?”  He closes the laptop he was glaring ferociously at and nods.  There is a chair to the left of his desk that is mostly free of papers, I sit.  I had gone over what I wanted to say a million times in my head and still not come to any conclusion as to how to handle this.  In the end I go with blunt and to the point.

“Are you angry at me or just yourself?”

“I’m not angry.” Hardheadedness is genetic in this family.

“And I’m Batman.”  That startles a smile out of him.  I roll my shoulders and try to work the kinks out of my spine.  Some days I feel old just trying to deal with everything on my plate.  How the man across from me - who has thirty years and three times as many broken bones - keeps it together at all is a mystery.  Although on second thought, that’s probably what the alcohol is for.

“I’m not… angry.  I, I’ve never handled failure well, my own most of all…”  He looks down at his desk, “If you though that I was angry with you then I apologize.”  This is going to be pulling teeth isn’t it?

“At the risk of sounding glib, the city is safe from a madman and no one else is going to die.  I fail to see how that is not a win.”  He is half way out of his chair before the edge of the desk pushes him back down.  I’ve seen Batman plenty of times, but for a split second I see what villians see in the moment before Justice and Retribution are served.  It is utterly terrifying.

“HE KILLED MY SON!  HE KILLED SO MANY PEOPLE.  He made you…”  His voice breaks.  “You think I didn’t know what he would do if he ever got out?  You think that I didn’t go over every possibility, every eventuality, trying to find a way to save everyone?  That’s my job, I save EVERYONE!  Now all I have to show for myself is a city full of graves and you pushed to cross the one line I’ve....”  He scrubs his hands over his face.  “I’ve tried to keep blood off my hands but what good is it if it just ends up on someone else?”

What do you say to that?  That I didn’t shoot Joker as some grand statement?  That I was afraid for my life and just wanted to go home?  In the end I just shrug.

“There are less graves then there would be without you,”  I’m not going to fix his guilt.  “and even fewer because of the people you have trained.”  Maybe alcohol is the right idea.

Bruce starts to straighten the papers that were knocked everywhere when he tried to go through the desk.

“You know I’ve had almost this exact same conversation with your son.”  He cocks his head.  “You know the whole, “I’m so bad because I didn’t protect you because that’s my job” one.”  A notebook had fallen over the side of the table, I pick it up and pass it to him.  “You and Jason are more alike than either of you will ever admit.”

A smile tugs at the corners of his mouth, “Now that’s a scary thought.”

“He’s not so bad.”  I smile back.  

“Although, if you are determined to stick with the guilt, some of that whiskey that you think you have hidden in the cellar would make a pretty good housewarming present.”  I hold my breath, not sure if he will take it as the teasing I mean it as, or get offended.  He throws his head back and shakes with laughter.

Three weeks later a package shows up at the door.  There are two bottles and a note that simply says, “to save you the trouble of breaking in.”  I stick the note on the fridge and grab two glasses from the cupboard.  When Jason gets back from patrol we can curl up on the couch and see who loses the ability to pour a shot without spilling first; just like the old times.  Only, unlike the old times, the whiskey will cost more than $7.95 and won’t come in a plastic bottle.  I put the glasses on the end table and smile to myself as I hear the motorcycle engine roaring to a stop outside.  This is going to be a good night.


End file.
